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Topic: Heating your home (Read 17491 times)

58 degrees north here. I live in a house on the side of a mountain, so you park above the house, walk past the door that opens from the outside into the attic, go down a flight of exterior stairs, walk into the main house, go down an interior flight of stairs to the basement/laundry room, and walk straight out of the basement/laundry room into the front yard. When it was built, the front half was heated by a woodstove and the back half by a drip-style oil heater, which was also the cookstove and water boiler. The oil heater didn't require any electricity to run. Now we have forced air heat from a basement furnace that needs electricity to run. Our backup is a wood stove, also in the basement. Modern insurance premiums won't allow for an upstairs wood stove. The cookstove and water heater are powered by electricity from a co-op. I grew up in the same town using propane for cooking and hot water, but it makes my husband nervous.

Midwest here. We have a forced air electric furnace with a digital thermostat so we can change the temperature setpoint depending on day and time. Our bedrooms are upstairs, so we tend to keep it a bit cooler just so it doesn't get too warm up there. most people either have electric or gas heat around here.

Everywhere I've lived in Finland has had district heating, there's a plant that burns fuel (in my town it's unfortunately at the moment mostly coal but they're also using trash and bio fuel) and produces electricity and hot water that circles around the town in radiators and returns back to the plant. It's a very easy way to do it and better for the environment than if everyone was doing the burning themselves. According to Wikipedia that covers about 40 % of heating in Finland, I think that it's mostly for apartment building and offices and larger building like that. Single family houses apparently (I've never lived in one, so have no personal experience) have electric heating or use fuel oil (that's what Wikipedia calls it). Some more rural places use wood, it's also common for some older wooden houses in my town (built in early 20th century for workers, some are still very old-fashioned). Heat pumps are becoming trendy, but aren't very widely used yet.

The heating is included in my rent and doesn't seem to be very expensive. I can't really control the temperature, though there's a thermostat. It's around 21 C during winter which feels too cold, because I have huge slightly drafty windows.

I moved to Japan a few months ago. I have an electric AC/heater thing in my living room. It works okay in there, but it doesn't do much for the rest of the apartment, and there's no insulation so the heat escapes quickly while the cold creeps in. I also have a space heater in the bathroom so I don't freeze getting out of the shower, and a kotatsu, which is lovely, but only when you're sitting under it.

My schools use kerosene heaters in the classrooms, and I'm waiting for the day where I trip and burn myself on one of them.

We're in England. We live in a farmhouse that was was built in 1629. We moved in in 2004 and are the first people to have central heating. We use heating oil burned in an electric boiler that feeds hot water to a radiator system. There are also five fire places, but we don't use them because two are inglenook and the others are in the kids' bedrooms. The house was built using waddle and daub ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattle_and_daub ) and gets very, very cold... it's a struggle to keep it comfortable even with the central heat.

An aside, I asked the woman who had lived in the house for forty years before we got it how she kept warm. She said that they had an electric heater in the front (living) room and otherwise used the fireplaces. The bedroom that she and her husband used didn't have a fireplace, and was the coldest room in the house, but they never used a heater in there until the year that her husband decided that the dogs were getting too cold!

America here. We live in a home that was built in the 30's, but we installed a new HVAC system this year - our old one died three years ago. We keep ours at 70 degrees because Mom likes it toasty.

And here's a difference in interpretation right here. I would find 70 acceptable, but far from "toasty."

POD. 70 is the lowest temperature I will accept in winter, despite DH's attempts to lower it to 65. Definitly not toasty.

We are in a condo in the midwest US that has a gas furnace that we have programmed for different temps on different days of the week. We also have a wood fireplace that we use more for ambiance than actual heat, and central AC for those sultry Wisconsin summers.

Right now, I'm in Northern Virginia and we have a gas furnace in the basement for heat. Works nicely except that the ductwork (big metal pipes leading from the furnace to each room) is not great so one bedroom is always cold. Growing up, my family had central heating from a heat pump. I've never lived in a house heated by oil or propane.

When we lived in Bulgaria for two years, we had "central heating" like in Finland. Hot water from a plant is pumped to all (or most) of the buildings in the city. We had radiators in each room and I loved them. The only thing I didn't like was that the city determined when the hot water got fed to the radiators so for a few days at the beginning and the end of winter, we froze. The city pumps hot water to the regular pipes (sinks, tubs, washing machines, etc.) all year long except for two weeks in summer when they do some maintenance. Then we used the flash heater for heating our bath/shower water.

America here. We live in a home that was built in the 30's, but we installed a new HVAC system this year - our old one died three years ago. We keep ours at 70 degrees because Mom likes it toasty.

And here's a difference in interpretation right here. I would find 70 acceptable, but far from "toasty."

POD. 70 is the lowest temperature I will accept in winter, despite DH's attempts to lower it to 65. Definitly not toasty.

We are in a condo in the midwest US that has a gas furnace that we have programmed for different temps on different days of the week. We also have a wood fireplace that we use more for ambiance than actual heat, and central AC for those sultry Wisconsin summers.

North East Ohio here - I'll echo everything Bethczar said. 70F is comfortable for me in the winter but that cause I wear a house coat and slippers all the time inside. We have a programable thermosat, 70F when we're home, 65F at night and when we're not home (used to be 63, but I felt that might be a little cold of the dog). For the AC it's 68 at night, 76 during the day and 72 when we're home.

Friends in the area have an electric furnace so they just converted their fireplace to a wood burning stove to help heat the house. Their furnace only kicks in if the house gets below 60F.

We have gas forced air in our 1929 house - originally, it had a coal fire furnace. They added in Air Conditioning some time in the 70s or 80s. My husband likes it REALLY cold, so our thermostat is set to 63 in the winter. Luckily, the old thermostat probably reads cold, and our house stays at about 68. I have a little space heater for my office - its the coldest room in the house.

Summer, our AC is usually set to 72, which is really too low, but my husband would die otherwise.

America here. We live in a home that was built in the 30's, but we installed a new HVAC system this year - our old one died three years ago. We keep ours at 70 degrees because Mom likes it toasty.

And here's a difference in interpretation right here. I would find 70 acceptable, but far from "toasty."

70 is as low as I can go without feeling uncomfortable. I live in the upper midwest. I do turn down the heat to 65 when I sleep.

I work in an old Victorian mansion that has been converted into offices. It uses radiator heat. I am on the third floor. It is usually 72 when I arrive in the morning and 76 when I leave at 5 pm. For me, this is a very comfortable temperature.

I'm also from rural Australia. We have a low-set brick house with a tin roof. We don't use any heating. We just put on another layer of clothing during the day and make a hot water bottle about an hour before bedtime. Average winter temps where I am are -4C - 15C (approx 24F - 59F). I like feeling cold, but I'm becoming less tolerant as I get older. I actually had to find a jumper (sweater) to wear quite a few times last winter!